


the world's a beast of a burden (you've been holding on a long time)

by waylaidepicurean



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Sad Cheryl Blossom, but we both know cheryl blossom deserves better, get the girl some therapy plz, i am toni topaz trash, neither i nor toni topaz are licensed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:33:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29651376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waylaidepicurean/pseuds/waylaidepicurean
Summary: Toni "follow you until you love me" Topaz really told those boys that she sat with Cheryl "you are the most important person in my life" Blossom for twelve hours and nothing happened. And they believed her? Ridiculous.
Relationships: Cheryl Blossom/Toni Topaz
Comments: 8
Kudos: 90





	the world's a beast of a burden (you've been holding on a long time)

**Author's Note:**

> This is trash because I am trash but that's ok because you watch Riverdale so you can't judge me.

"I'm perfectly fine," Cheryl says. _I'm fine, I'm fine._ Cheryl Blossom is a liar, but she comes by it honest. Toni has always known that. She feels Nana Rose's eyes on her back and sucks her teeth. It hurts her heart to leave.

\--

When she comes back, Cheryl smiles that soft, familiar smile at her and she _knows. "I'm really glad to see you."_ That fine china hand holds her elbow like _she_ is made of glass and she _knows._ Cheryl offers her drink, a snack, _have you eaten breakfast?_ and she _knows_.

She'd come here with a plan, of course, but it felt like more than a desperate last stand now. "Where's Nana Blossom?" She asks casually, carefully, as she slides with as much grace as her ever-shifting center of gravity affords her onto a high stool at the new kitchen island. Cheryl gives her a look - head tilted and cocker spaniel curious.

"Hiram is fairly regular in his amateur shakedowns. She makes herself scarce. I assume she called a car and has gone to visit mother."

From the handful of carpools she's organized, she knows the closest women's prison isn't close at all. She has time - they have time. Cheryl smiles as she cuts peppers with a deft, gloved hand, light in a way she hasn't been any other visit.

Toni doesn't _know_ , but she suspects.

There is one omelet and one plate and Toni doesn't ask if Cheryl has already eaten. She wolfs it down and Cheryl watches from the other side of the counter with her chin in her hands - dressed in warm red and beaming like the sun.

\--

Cheryl keeps the flames stoked in the parlor and Toni holds her breath every time; the way the other woman stares into the flames, swaying slightly in her full-length lace, feels like nails raking up her spine. The glove is an affectation, she thinks. But she doesn't know.

It's hard to ignore the roundness of her stomach between them and Cheryl pretends very hard like she can stop herself from looking. When Toni lets herself be posed by hands so familiar they could be her own her heart squeezes like those hands are clutching it tight. Cheryl's touch is so achingly tender that Toni feels a little mad about it - they could have this all the time, if only.

When Cheryl retreats to her easel across their shared space Toni pretends she doesn't see the way her dark eyes glow in the firelight. Her hands seek out her belly, rubbing it in circles to soothe herself as much as anything.

There's seven years of distance between them. The room yawns like a lifetime of missed moments. She doesn't know where to start and Cheryl makes no effort to break the silence. She's afraid of what might come out if she does. Will Cheryl resent her for leaving? For not reaching out more, sooner, harder? For watching her social media presence shrink and go dark and being too cowardly to check-in after so much radio silence? For coming here, now, with all this new _baggage,_ to plead her case?

The way Cheryl looks at her, still, makes her brave.

" _I'm doomed to a life of unhappiness."_

" _You deserve to be happy."_

And it hurts. Her heart hurts so much to see how Cheryl is suffering. And it hurts to be so, so angry at her - Toni feels selfish and cruel for it. The urge to argue rises through her but she can't. Not like this. She can't logic Cheryl out of a position she didn't logic herself into - she took enough psychology courses to know that much. But she refuses to let Cheryl's martyrdom stand, unopposed.

"Come here," Toni demands. There's a stubborn set to Cheryl's jaw but her eyes are soft and longing. She shifts her tone to something light and haughty. "You can't see all the _fine_ details from that far away." It's thin cover for Cheryl to do the thing she wants to do anyway and neither of them acknowledges it.

"I haven't forgotten a single one of your fine details," Cheryl hedges as she settles her palette to the side once more. "I've already finished the sketch…" There's a waver in her voice, a questioning lilt.

Toni turns her head in profile, chin high, and taps the line of her jaw, drawing a line down to the soft underneath. "Did you get my new scar?"

She knows quite well that Cheryl didn't, and Cheryl knows quite well that a scar under her chin wouldn't be visible in the pose she selected for her. But concern washes over Cheryl's face and Toni knows she can't help but rush to her side, peering and pouting and cradling her cheek in the palm of her bare hand. "Just give me a name," she says, and Toni laughs in her face.

"Toni Topaz. I did it to myself; was breaking up a barfight and I raised my hand to push away a swing and cut myself on my own jewelry." The look on Cheryl's face doesn't look half as amused as Toni suddenly feels, but Cheryl's face is so much closer than it's been in years that it makes Toni almost giddy. She wraps her fingers around Cheryl's forearm and the look on her face is like she stepped into a bear trap - like she can't decide whether to accept her fate or gnaw her own hand off at the wrist. "Sit down," she instructs, and Cheryl swallows hard but obeys.

The couch is little more than a loveseat and Cheryl sets herself as far away as she can reasonably manage, legs pressed primly together and one arm still held fast in sapphic, serpent hands. When Toni rearranges herself to face her she shifts close enough that their knees bump and Cheryl's hands squeeze into fists.

Teasingly, she runs her own free hand up her neck, until she's pressing the back of her index finger up her throat and under her jaw again, dragging the skin to exaggerate her chin. "Did you see all the weight I've gained in my face?"

"You've never been more beautiful," Cheryl says immediately, with all the saccharine sincerity she's always used to compliment her, and Toni laughs to keep them both from crying, she thinks.

Her hand drops from her face to her stomach, resting, draped, over the top. "You have to say that because only assholes tell a pregnant woman she's getting fat and ugly." She's not fishing, necessarily. But she missed how easily the compliments come. It feels like slipping back in time, a bit.

Cheryl's eyes roam like they've been given permission - from the rising mound of her stomach to the swell of her breasts and, when she remembers she's being watched, down her thighs and to her knees where they focus sheepishly on the skin that peeks through her jeans. "You're beautiful," she repeats in an almost breathless sigh.

Toni rattles the hand still holding onto Cheryl, trying to coax her gaze back up. "Do you want to feel?" There's not really any way to dance around her belly, so the only option is to embrace it. Cheryl's eyes snap to hers, shocked, and Toni wishes she could just read what goes on in her head.

"May I?" she asks, incredulous and swallowing like she hopes against hope. It feels ridiculous that Cheryl would even question that, but.

She doesn't know, but she _suspects_.

Toni rucks her shirt up under her breasts. She lets Cheryl's arm go free and watches her whole body lock up in an anxious shiver. Her hands reach and withdraw in the sway of an internal argument Toni isn't privy to. "Here," she says evenly, grasping Cheryl's wrists again and guiding her hands to skin.

There's a startled little gasp; an "Oh," that bursts out between her nude lips in a rush. Her hands are stiff for a moment until they melt like wax around the curve of heated bronze, molding to cradle the sides of the expanse. "Oh."

Cheryl leans low: she looks like a child peering into a fishbowl, a mystic reading tea leaves, a fortune-teller gazing into her crystal ball. Thumbs stroke absently against her skin in well-worn tracks, now deeper with age and the stretch of her pregnancy, and she clenches against a shiver. She doesn't think Cheryl even notices; so fascinated and deep within her own head that Toni might call it a trance if she subscribed to Cheryl's brand of superstition. "Hello, tiny Topaz," she says.

Cheryl's eyes slide close and she presses her wan cheek to taut flesh; Toni can feel the chill to her skin even in the warm room. Her hand gravitates to red hair in a way that feels absolutely natural, even though it's been so long. The gentle scratching at the top of Cheryl's head sends a wave of damp breath over the drum of her stomach and the shiver is different this time. It feels less like a pull from between her legs and more like stretching after being curled up for far too long. A warm, expanding feeling that makes her run broader lines up and down Cheryl's side as if she can transfer the feeling by touch alone. "I've dreamt of you like this," Cheryl whispers, secret soft.

"Pregnant?" She asks it rhetorically, aching to hear more. Cheryl nods against her.

"I thought I could get around the curse if it was you. That I could have you and our tiny Topaz, and nothing could hurt you, or them. Even when you left for college I held onto that stupid, simple hope," Cheryl says, her voice self-deprecating as if she was talking about only just finding out Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny weren't real. She doesn't sound at all like she's documenting the loss of her faith.

"I couldn't give you this. I know that now. I knew it then, even as I pretended I was more clever than fate. When mother - when the rest of the family died, I realized. I'm truly the last Blossom. Nana's hearty, but she's old. Mother too, even if her options weren't limited to conjugal visits or seducing prison guards into committing a federal felony. The line ends with me. It's my penance." She sighs, and there's only deep resignation. "It was such a beautiful dream."

And then she turns to press her lips softly, softly, so softly against Toni's skin, still lost in some inner fantasy. It startles Toni and her breath hitches and hiccups in her throat. The jolt shakes Cheryl from her mind like a terrified rabbit hearing the bay of a hound, the panic almost sending her from the couch. Toni's sure she would have flung herself right onto the floor if she hadn't grabbed the other woman with both hands first, her extra weight giving her the advantage for once. "Cheryl, stop. Talk to me," she begs, but all she gets in return is a series of broken pleas for forgiveness. "Stop. _Stop,_ " she repeats, her tone sharper until it cuts through the noise and reaches Cheryl's head.

"I shouldn't have done that," she croaks. It sounds like an apology but it doesn't feel like one to Toni. She doesn't want an apology.

"It's fine, Cher-" Cheryl is thrashing her head before she even finishes talking. There is the most intense desire to shake Cheryl silly that rises up in her.

She gets it, as much as anyone who isn't experiencing it can. Anxiety, depression - bipolar, she thinks, _suspects_. Cheryl is sick, she needs help, and no amount of logic can help someone whose brain is using its own form of connections to cope like Cheryl's is. But all the empathy in the world doesn't stop the frustration that wells up in her chest as Cheryl's irrationality asserts itself, denying them something they both want so much for some imaginary fear. It's selfish ( _it's natural_ ) and it's cruel ( _you can be upset, this isn't a competition_ ) and she lets it have its moment but doesn't let it dwell.

She grips Cheryl's face in one hand, pinching her chin firmly and kissing her hard. "I love you," she says, fiercely, holding her eyes.

"I can't give you this, Toni," Cheryl babbles, panicked.

Toni kisses her again. "I don't care. I love you."

"You should. You mustn't. I can't."

She kisses her again - it tastes of salt - and Cheryl is cowed by her insistence. Her body goes limp like a sackcloth doll. "Look at me," Toni demands, and Cheryl turns her dark, wet, doe eyes to her gaze. "I love you," she says.

"I never doubted it for an instant, Toni," she says, and Toni is glad for that, at least. She can't keep Cheryl's mind from telling her lies about herself, but this thing - this one thing - she has some control over.

"I love you," she repeats, like maybe she can turn it into a song that rings in Cheryl's head long after she's gone. "I never, ever stopped." Steel replaces her spine and she tightens her grip. Cheryl hasn't moved, still slightly hunched over Toni's stomach - a trembling supplicant at the altar of the manifested. There's a coiling in her that makes her brave and bold enough for the both of them. "You have to trust me. We can have this. We will." Cheryl's face screws up as she starts crying again, but Toni doesn't let her sink under it. "Tell me, Cher. Don't lie to me."

Cheryl looks at her - face red and wet from tears and her dripping nose - and Toni gentles her touch, swiping at her face messily to dry her cheeks. "I love you, Toni. I couldn't be so cruel as to lie about that."

That's enough, for now. Toni draws Cheryl close, brooking no resistance. Cheryl gives her none, sinking into her shoulder and burying her face into her neck like a child lost. Her shirt quickly soaks through with tears and snot but she doesn't spare it a single thought, rocking gently as Cheryl cries and cries and quiets in turn.

They lay, cramped, on that tiny, uncomfortable lounge for what might be an hour or might be three. Toni's back screams and throbs in pain and she'd sit for three hours more. But Cheryl rises, sniffling, her hand childishly running across her nose. "You must be starving. Let me make you something to eat," she says, simple as that, as she drags the blade of her hands against the top of her cheeks - trying to preserve makeup that's long since worn off.

It's coping. It's a familiar pattern. She's afraid to push her anymore. Toni sits, still, and watches Cheryl shake herself out and straighten her dress. When the other woman pauses, considering her with that old shrewdness, Toni almost holds her breath. Satin brushes her cheek. And when Cheryl kisses her, so lightly she almost doesn't feel it, on her lips, Toni feels like she can breathe. Cheryl nuzzles her cheek for just a moment and kisses her there, too.

When she leaves, she doesn't wait for Toni to follow. Toni gives her her privacy and takes some for herself, rolling her shirt back down over her belly and feeling the wet fabric at her shoulder catch and drag uncomfortably. There's a still unsettling squirming building in frequency in her belly and she groans. "Yeah, yeah. I get it. Figures that's what gets your attention."

In the kitchen Cheryl is on her phone, standing in front of the open freezer and fridge. Toni eases onto her stool. "What're you doin', Cher?"

"Considering options. You need folate," she replies. She looks at Toni, just for a moment, and her face is dry, her makeup fixed. It almost looks like they're back seven hours ago aside from the bloodshot red of her eyes. It's scary. She stretches her hand across the table, palm up and waiting. Cheryl doesn't notice right away. She focuses on meal planning to avoid focusing on anything else. But then she does see, out of the corner of her eye.

For a moment Toni feels like a helpless, hopeless fool as Cheryl decides - does she pretend she doesn't see the outstretched hand? Will they return to this game; the one where Cheryl treats her like a stranger because she thinks that she can't have her, and if she can't have it all she'd rather have nothing?

She'll fight. She'll fight until she has nothing left in her. But she doesn't want to do it alone.

That trembling, china fine hand slips into her own. "I love you," Cheryl says, soft like the sheets they once shared. "I always have."

A knot forms in her throat and she swallows past it. "I know."


End file.
